[Tuidjy]

Jaif, Ulm's armies are a joke :-) Everyone expects them to be elite and
effective, but I personnaly think that the developers just had an ax
to grind with Germans. The Arbalests are too slow, and their only
advantage over crossbows is that they are better for shooting your own
men in the back. Their infantry gets too tired much too easily. Real
elite infantry eats them for lunch. Their heavy cavalry is truly elite,
but standard heavy cavalry does the same job only marginally less well.
And to top it all off, despite their rather underwhelming mages, everyone
in Ulm has a vulnerability to magic, as opposed to a resistance to it, as
one would expect from a race that stays away from magic.

Oh yeah, it is very hard to get decent scales for them. The fire pick of
their mages makes them old, so you need a life scale, the resource heavy
troops prevent you from taking sloth... all in all, Ulm is a sad, sad race.

In MP games, though, Ulm does OK. Everyone wants to use their forging
services, and thus they are left alone 'till late game. Ulm is often
a member of the winning alliance.